Susanna
by djenie
Summary: This is a prequel to my story Rose Garden and tells my version of how Jack's parents met. Focuses on my OC, Susanna Johnstone, Jack's mother, who I introduced in RG. It would probably be useful to read Rose Garden first. Isn't that an adorable pic of 'Jack' as a child! Rated K for mention of spousal abuse. Characters; my OCs; Susanna and Conor, Jack O'Neill (as a baby)


**This is a prequel to my story** _ **Rose Garden**_ **, set in the same altered reality as** _ **Rose Garden**_ _ **,**_ _ **Runaway Star**_ **and** _ **Runaway Star, the Interlude**_ _ **.**_ **Not strictly necessary to read them all first, but** _ **Rose Garden**_ **might be helpful, as it will introduce you to my Original Character, Susanna Johnstone, Jack's mother. Quite a while ago I promised to fill in her backstory, and here it is. I'm sorry it took so very long to get it out. I hope you enjoy my version of the meeting of Jack's parents.**

 **A general Author's Note:**

 **I know that I have stories posted that are not completed. Some of you have asked about them, and I really appreciate your interest! I am making an effort to continue (and hopefully finish!) some of these neglected works, namely;** _ **Lost**_ _ **,**_ _ **There'll be Time Enough for Sadness When You Leave Me**_ _ **,**_ _ **Retirement Year**_ _ **, and**_ _ **Maverick Jack the Assassin**_ _ **.**_ **Each one of these reached a point where I could not seem to make any progress. I make no promises for a timeline, but I'm working on it. Until these are done (or I'm forced to finally admit defeat and delete them!) I won't post anything else that isn't already complete. Right now I'm focusing on** **Maverick Jack** **and making some pretty decent progress. I hope to have something ready to post soon. Thanks so very much for your patience!**

 **Now, on to the story!**

 **xxxxxxxx**

 **SUSANNA**

 **September, 1951, Chicago**

Susanna Johnstone fell in love with Conor O'Neill between 7:00 and 9:15 in the evening, on a Tuesday in early September. It would never have happened if her roommate hadn't dragged her along that night to a gallery showing for several local artists.

Sue wasn't really interested in art. As a medical student she considered such things as painting pictures something of a waste of time. There were much more important things on her mind... like finding a cure for cancer, or getting a job at the Mayo Clinic, both of which were on her future to-do list. She was 20 and already in her second year of med school—two years ahead of most of her contemporaries. She planned to be starting her internship in another 16 months—and during that time she would have to accomplish two and a half years worth of study. It was going to require a lot of hard work. Even though she was brilliant, she knew it would take her best effort to meet the standards she had set for herself.

It didn't help that she was one of only three females in her class of two hundred and ten students. The year was 1951 and women doctors, while hardly unknown, were definitely in the minority. The men in her class seemed amazed that she and the other two women didn't faint at the sight of blood!

Susanna was focused and determined, and there was no frivolity in her life. She did not go out on dates or attend parties. She and another young woman shared an apartment not far from the campus, and Sue spent her evenings studying. Barb was her roommate's name. She worked as a secretary at a law firm in downtown Chicago. Barb's ambition was to marry one of the young attorneys in the firm, quit her job, live in a nice house in a good neighborhood, and raise babies with her lawyer husband. She was a perfectly nice person, Susanna admitted, but nothing at all like Sue herself.

Anyway, here they were at the gallery, and Sue supposed they would be there for several hours. She sighed and decided to simply tag along behind Barb, since she had no idea who the artists were, or what to expect.

The first room they entered was full of bland landscapes. Pretty trees, pretty lakes, pretty mountains, more pretty trees... ugh, she thought. Talk about broken records! Didn't this painter have an original thought in his head? Back home in Minnesota this stuff would have been called kitsch. Barb oohed and aahed over every single canvas. You'd think she'd never even seen a real tree in her whole life! Finally Sue went to sit on a bench in the center of the room to wait for Barb to finish admiring all the cookie-cutter pictures.

A man sat down beside her. He looked to be in his late twenties, and was dressed in dark trousers and a sweater. He had a beard and his hair was too long—it brushed his collar, and was thick and curly and very red. His eyebrows were red, also, and quite heavy. She could see them above the odd dark glasses he was wearing—quite unnecessarily indoors and at night. However, a moment later he removed the glasses, and she saw that his eyes were a very nice green with thick dark lashes and small laugh lines in the corners. Why do men always get the great lashes, she thought. He smiled at her and she found herself smiling back.

He waved a hand to indicate the paintings. "What do you think?" he asked.

"Not very exciting," she said without thinking. She was usually honest in her opinions to the point of bluntness. "The artist apparently never looked at the real world."

"Really!" He sounded surprised. "You don't think they're pretty?"

"Oh, they're pretty," she admitted. "Too pretty. Fake."

He was looking at her oddly and she suddenly had an awful thought.

"You didn't paint them did you?" she asked with a grimace. He did look sort of like one of those beatnik artists she'd heard about.

He grinned. "No. I didn't paint them."

She breathed easier. "I'm glad. They're very boring."

His grin got wider. "What would you paint?"

"Me?" She looked startled. "The only things I've ever painted are my bedroom walls!"

He seemed to find this exceedingly funny, throwing his head back as he laughed and showing somewhat uneven, but very appealing white teeth. "What color?" he asked at length.

"Kind of blue. Well, purple, actually. Not lavender! And the door and window frames are dark purple. My flat-mate hates it."

"What color is her room?"

"Pink and white." She made a face.

"I didn't think you looked like a pink sort of girl," he said.

"I only did it because it needed painting. Not because I really wanted to. That was the best color on the chart. I was in a hurry."

"For what?"

"Excuse me?"

"Why were you in a hurry? Meeting your boyfriend?"

She thought this was a rather bold comment and a frown appeared between her eyebrows, but he just kept smiling in a way that she found she liked, so she answered him. "No. I had a lot of homework to do and I didn't want to waste time."

"You're still in school?" He clearly thought she meant high school and she was mildly insulted that he thought she looked that young.

"I'm a student at the University of Chicago medical school. This is my second year."

He looked somewhat impressed at that. "You're going to be a doctor?"

"Yes."

"Good for you," he said, and he sounded sincere. "I wish you good luck with your studies." He stood up then. "Maybe I'll see you later and you can tell me if you find anything you like at the show." He smiled at her again and then turned and walked away.

Sue watched until he disappeared into another room of the gallery, wondering if he had been put off because she said she was a medical student. But then she dismissed the thought as unimportant. What if he had—it was nothing for her to worry about.

She looked around and after a minute realized that Barb was not in sight. She must have moved on to another room. Sue debated which direction Barb might have gone. There were three doors to choose from; she deliberately did not choose the one the red-haired man had taken. Sure enough, she found Barb in the room she chose. This room hosted an entirely different type of paintings. These were abstract. Shapes and colors seemingly splashed randomly across canvas. Distorted figures, difficult to decipher. Some may have been caricatures of humans or animals. Most were incomprehensible. A tree growing out of the mouth of something that might have been a cow? Paper dolls pinned on a clothesline?

Sue turned away, shaking her head. This was even worse than the cookie-cutter landscapes! She walked over and stood beside Barb in front of a particularly bizarre muddle of orange and red and yellow flames with a screaming mouth in the center. Well, at least this one called to mind an emotion. It was rather frightening! She found herself hoping the red-haired man hadn't painted these, either! She listened in bemusement as Barb babbled out much the same comments she had given about the cookie-cutter trees.

Three, or maybe four more rooms to go. Susanna followed her roommate, thinking about the paper she needed to work on for her advanced immunology class, and dissecting in her mind the cadaver she and her two anatomy lab mates would be starting tomorrow. She simply shut out her surroundings; the next two rooms went by in a blur, she could not have described a single canvas. After a while she glanced at her watch. 6:55. Probably two more hours before Barb would be ready to leave. She sighed and headed into the next showroom.

This room was different! Sue was captivated by the first picture she saw.

It was of the sea. However, this was not a sunny sea with blue water and sandy beaches. This was an angry and violent sea. There was nothing pretty about the stormy greens and grays of this water. A fishing boat was being battered mercilessly by unrelenting waves rising much higher than the boat's rigging.

And the angle of view was most unusual! The observer was above the terrible drama, but not directly so—looking instead from off to the side—so there was the small boat in the center, nearly swamped, buried in a deep trough between gigantic waves, certain to be destroyed, demolished, in the next instant as the water crashed down upon it. Beyond the boat was a long view of the ocean, and in the far distance the storm was ending, the sea was calming, shading toward blue, and through the heavy, fierce black and gray cloud, there was one tiny faraway break, one opening, where a single fragile beam of sunlight appeared. A promise of safety—too far, too late.

Susanna drew in a breath that was nothing short of a gasp. The sound drew Barb's attention. She shivered. "How awful," Barb said. "How ugly."

"No," Sue said. "It's not ugly. It's real."

Barb looked at her oddly, and then turned away, seeking a more pleasant view. But Susanna stood before the painting for a long time, looking at the image, and then looking beyond that to the essence, the shading of color, the texture, the brush strokes that gave life to the sea. She really knew nothing about style or technique, but she sensed that this artist had a strong connection and understanding of the materials and how to use them.

In the lower right corner was a single name; O'Neill. The letters blended so well into the violence of the waves that she only noticed it after several minutes of examining the scene.

Below the picture was a tag with one word printed on it. HOPE

There were several more paintings by O'Neill in the room. And Sue found every one fascinating. They all were done on the same theme; man against the overwhelming power of nature. Whether it was a raging storm, a forest fire, a blinding blizzard, there was the same message; this is real, this is truth, nature is stronger than us, but we will survive. The tiny fishing boat, the house owner fighting to protect his home from the encroaching flames, or the traveler struggling through wind and snow, they all fought—none of them were defeated as yet.

Each painting was done with that same understanding of the medium and how best to use it. Susanna moved slowly through the room, studying every picture, and then she went around a second time. Whoever painted these is a person worth knowing, she decided, someone I would like to meet.

Eventually she glanced at her watch, and was startled to find that it was 8:50. She'd been in this room for nearly two hours. There were still people about, but she knew closing time must be near. With one last look around she left in search of Barb.

"Did you find anything you like?" a voice said as she passed through the door into the next room.

She turned and met the green eyes of the red-haired man. She smiled. "Yes. I found something real," she said.

He cocked his head in an interested manner and pushed himself away from the wall where he'd been lounging. As he stood up straight, she saw that he was just her height, five-eleven. She wouldn't be able to wear heels when she was with him. Not that she ever wore them anyway. A second later she wondered where such a thought had come from—why would she think of being _with him_?

"What did you find?" he asked.

"Someone who has really looked at the world," she said. "Who recognizes how difficult survival is, but still has hope." He raised an eyebrow, and she pointed through the room behind them towards the door she meant. "In there. The paintings by O'Neill."

"Really? You saw all that in those pictures?"

"Yes. Have you looked at them?"

"Oh, yes." His tone was odd. "I've looked at them a lot."

"You don't agree with me," she said. "That's okay. People usually don't." She turned to go.

"Wait a minute," he objected. "That isn't what I said."

She looked back at him and his green eyes were studying her closely. Suddenly she understood. "You're O'Neill. Those paintings are yours."

He nodded. "Yes. And no one's ever described them quite like you did."

"Hope," she said thoughtfully. "That's what your title said."

He gave her a crooked smile.

She liked the way he smiled. "They're all the same theme," she said. "Struggle against the things that would destroy us."

"That's what life is," he said softly.

"And that's what I like about them."

"Thank you," he said, his green eyes warm and serious on her face.

Sue felt herself blushing at his sincerity, and looked away, searching for something lighter to say. "Of course, then there's the one of the man running after the train. That one's funny. His clothes are falling out of the suitcase, and he's left a trail of things behind him."

"I was just having fun with that one." He laughed. She thought he had a nice laugh. "I once saw someone running to catch a train and leaving a trail of his stuff behind." He put out his hand. "I'm Conor. Conor O'Neill."

She shook his hand. His fingers were warm and smooth. "Susanna Johnstone."

"Well, Susanna Johnstone. Would you like to have dinner with me tomorrow night? I'd say tonight, but it's rather late."

"Oh," she said, disappointed. "Tomorrow's Wednesday and I have a class from six until nine in the evening. And it's usually even later before we actually get away." She knew it sounded like an excuse, and she went on. "It's an anatomy class, and we're doing...uh...dissections..." She stopped, wincing. That was even worse. "I'm a medical student," she added, trying to explain.

"Yes. You said that when we talked earlier."

"Oh. That's right."

He grinned. "Do you have classes all day tomorrow?"

"No. That's the only one."

"What about lunch, then? We could go to Emilio's."

"Oh. I like it there," she said without thinking.

"Great! Maybe afterwards we can go to the matinee at the Grand. I think 'Bedtime for Bonzo' is playing," he added, naming a recently released movie. "Unless you've seen it."

"No. I haven't been to a movie in a long time."

"Busy with school work?"

"Yes. Thank you—I'd like to have lunch with you." She accepted despite the fact that she had tons of studying she could be doing. Not to mention that she'd barely met him.

"I guess you'd better tell me where you live so I can pick you up?" he asked.

She gave him her address, and he said he'd be there at 11:00. "The matinee starts at two," he said. "That should give us enough time for lunch. You'll be home by four-thirty."

"That sounds fine." She glanced around the gallery, thinking of Barb for the first time in a while. "It's getting late. I'd better go find my friends."

Conor walked with her. The crowd had thinned out and there was no sign of Barb and their other friend. The gallery closed at ten.

"I guess I missed them," she said.

"How will you get home?" he wanted to know.

"I'll take the bus. There's a stop just a block from my house."

"Is it safe? I'll be glad to drive you."

"Oh, it's safe," she assured him. "And it's probably far out of your way."

"I'll walk you to the bus stop, then."

"You don't have to do that."

"I want to," he said, smiling.

They left the gallery and headed down the street.

"I should have asked this earlier, I guess," he said. "Are you seeing anyone?"

"No. I'd have probably turned you down, if I were."

"Only probably?"

She felt herself blushing again, glad it was dark. That was a slip of the tongue. The truth was, she'd have said yes even if she had a boyfriend. Conor O'Neill was too interesting to pass up.

"I don't have much free time for dating," she said. "School keeps me very busy."

"And yet... you said yes to me," he commented.

I did, she thought. She blushed harder.

They stood at the stop for only a few minutes before the next bus came along. She checked her watch. 9:15.

"I'll see you tomorrow morning," he said as she climbed on.

"Good night," she replied.

 **o0o**

 **November, 1951**

"I was in love with you by the time I got on that bus," Susanna admitted to Conor two months later. They'd been seeing each other nearly every day since they met, and she didn't think she could possibly be happier.

"After only spending twenty minutes with me?" he said.

"But I spent two hours with your paintings," she pointed out.

He gave that laugh that she loved so much.

"Have you decided to go home with me at Thanksgiving?" she asked.

"What have you told your parents about me?"

"That you're an artist. And you're smart and handsome. And I love you."

"Whoa!" he said. "You think there's any chance they'll like me?"

"Wellll..." she said, doubtfully, making him squirm. "They might like you better if you got your hair cut." He'd shaved off the beard some time ago and she'd gotten used to the thick red curls that fell below his collar now, and brushed his eyebrows. In fact, she loved his hair—it was so soft and sexy. But she could just see her Dad now!

"For you... anything," he promised, reaching out and pulling her to him. He kissed her hungrily. "One haircut coming up."

When he showed up two days later with his hair shorn above his ears, it almost made her cry.

Her parents did like him. He was thoughtful and polite, and went out of his way to charm the whole family. Axel Johnstone liked the fact that Conor had served in the Navy during the War—he joined up right after Pearl, at the age of eighteen, and fought in the Pacific. Axel himself had been in the Army during the First War, and was wounded in France. Conor met Susanna's family; her identical twin sister, Isabel, who was a nursing student at a teaching hospital in Duluth, her three brothers, Aiden, Lucas and Caleb, as well as a number of aunts, uncles and cousins. He seemed to get along well with all of them, and the Thanksgiving holiday was pleasant and fun. When Axel and Elaine found out that Conor had no close family—just some cousins in Boston—they invited him to come back for Christmas.

Being in love with Conor did not alter Susanna's ambition or focus one whit. She spent just as much time studying and working as she had before. The only difference was she did a lot of it at Conor's place.

He lived in a grubby fourth floor loft by the river. It was freezing in winter and sweltering in summer. It was one big open space, no interior walls, in some places there were no floorboard, just the joists—which made navigating the space a challenge. He had to go down to the lower floor to use a bathroom. He cooked on a camp stove set on a small table—what little cooking he did. He slept on a mattress on the floor. The place was a dump—but it had two things he needed—very low rent and superb light.

Every other girl he'd brought here either refused to come back or promptly began to nag him to move. Sue didn't care. All she needed was a surface to spread her books and papers on. She bought a cheap mission table at a flea market and set it at one end of the room. On days when she had no classes she studied there while Conor painted at the other end. When the light faded, they talked and made love. Then usually they would go to Sue's apartment to eat. Afterwards, Conor would go to his night job at a shipping company in the harbor, loading and unloading barges. At four a.m. he would come back and sleep for a few hours.

Conor's paintings sold very well that fall and winter. In January he was offered a long-term exhibit contract with a gallery just off the Loop. It was a major breakthrough for him. The gallery was patronized by collectors in a much higher income bracket than he had been able to reach previously. The pressure would be on him to maintain his current high quality work, but he was certain he could do that.

Also in January, Susanna was notified that her academic record had earned her early entrance into St. Anthony Children's Hospital internship program. She would be starting at St. Anthony's the following June, just a month before her twenty-first birthday, one of the youngest interns in the program.

Susanna and Conor celebrated their well-deserved good fortune together. A lot of alcohol and plenty of sex were involved in the celebration.

In the third week of March, Susanna found out she was pregnant. That led to Sue and Conor's first major fight—each blaming the other for the failure to use birth control. The resulting dissention lasted a week, until Conor did an abrupt turnaround. He insisted that he was pleased at the idea of being a father—not to mention rather proud—and tried to convince Sue that parenthood could be rewarding.

Sue did not altogether share his feelings. Pregnancy could put an end to her ambitions to be a doctor. Her early residency offer would be withdrawn, and she might even be required to drop out of medical school. Being a mother was not tempting enough compensation for what she would lose! Maybe in ten years or so, but not now!

Still, it wasn't as if she had a choice, and Conor was persistent and affectionate. So she changed her plan. She asked to have the internship deferred until the following January, arguing that she felt she needed further pediatric study. It was a legitimate argument, although she was sure she could have handled the early admission. This would actually put her back on her original schedule for the start of her residency. She would continue her current classes until June, when her pregnancy would probably be starting to show, and take summer classes if possible. The baby would be born in October, and by January she would be ready to take up the residency.

"Who's going to take care of the baby while you're working?" Conor asked when she told him her new plan. He knew how demanding the schedule of an intern could be.

"You are. You work at home during the day. You can take care of him."

"I'm busy painting!"

"It's your baby, too," she declared. "This way, we both get what we want; it'll just take a bit longer. Otherwise, I'll have to go back to Summerfield, Minnesota."

After a bit more discussion, he agreed.

They were married on March 31st, by a Justice of the Peace. Susanna wrote a letter to her parents, announcing the marriage, and the upcoming 'blessed event.'

Once they got over the initial shock, Axel and Elaine Johnstone were cautiously optimistic. They knew their daughter—how ambitious, smart and capable she was. And they were confident that Sue and Conor loved each other. When Susanna said she could work it out, they believed her. And they were delighted at the thought of a grandchild!

Axel offered to help them pay the rent on a decent apartment, and Susanna found a tiny, clean place only a few blocks from Conor's loft.

Conor kept the loft, because of the light, and the two of them moved into the apartment. For the time being, not much changed in their daily lives. During the day he painted while she studied. They went back to their own place for dinner and love-making. He went to his night job on the docks. Sue attended classes, and concealed her pregnancy successfully until the end of the semester. Instead of taking summer classes, she got a job as a file clerk in a doctor's office, thinking it would be good to save up as much money as possible.

Conor painted furiously through the spring and summer—the demand for his work was high, and the gallery was always in need of more. Sales were good, and for the first time he was enjoying a steady income from his paintings.

Finally, near the end of July, it became impossible to hide the fact that Sue was pregnant—her height and build had served her well up until then. The doctor's office let her go. A small diner on the street where she and Conor lived hired her for a few weeks as a waitress—pregnancy didn't seem to faze anyone there. By the time she had to stop working entirely in late September, she had saved a little more than two hundred dollars.

The baby was born October 20th after only seven hours of labor. It was a boy, seven pounds, fifteen ounces. Susanna was mildly disappointed that his hair was brown, like hers—she'd hoped for red. His eyes were gray at first, but soon turned brown. He was a long, slim newborn—the doctor predicted that he would be tall.

Conor was delighted! "You'd think he did all the work himself," Sue complained to her mother good naturedly when Elaine and Axel arrived two days after the baby was born. Her mother laughed and said all new fathers acted that way.

There was a bit of a kerfuffle over the baby's name. Conor insisted on Jonathan, after his father, and Axel was set on Johnstone as the middle name, saying it was an important tradition, insuring that the maternal family name would not be lost. Conor thought the combination sounded awkward. However, he finally caved in after some pouting, and Jonathan Johnstone O'Neill's birth certificate became an official document—the first of many in his life.

Susanna took up her internship in January, and Conor worked at home and took care of the baby during the day. Jon was a better than average baby, he spared his parents the misery of colic and bad sleep habits. Conor found that he enjoyed being with his son, and seldom begrudged the time it took during the day to care for him.

At this point, Conor's paintings were selling almost as fast as he could send them to the gallery. He was one of a small cadre of artists who were currently popular with well-to-do young collectors in the city. Conor didn't even mind that Sue worked ten and twelve hour shifts at the hospital. They saw very little of each other, since he still kept his night job. He and Jon would be sleeping when she came home around six in the evening, and by the time he got up at ten to go to work, she would be asleep.

Jon was a little over a year old when Sue finished her internship and was invited to remain as a resident at St. Anthony's. She was still maintaining her excellent record, and the hospital was pleased to have her continue her training with them.

Things began to fall apart for Conor about the time Jon hit the 'terrible twos.' For all that he was a calm and sweet baby, Jon was a horrible toddler! It was no longer possible to set him in a playpen with a few toys and a bottle and ignore him for an hour or so at a time. He screamed, learned quickly how to get out of the playpen, and was intensely curious, especially about things he was not supposed to touch—like his father's paints and supplies.

Also, about this time the market for Conor's work simply evaporated. He was dropped by the gallery that had been taking his paintings. The less affluent galleries would only take a few at a time, and not many sold. The canvases began to pile up in the loft.

Jon was three when Susanna's residency ended successfully and she was offered a place on staff at St. Anthony's. The pay was moderate—barely enough to support them without Conor's steady income. He got more hours at the shipping company, but that meant he had to sleep during the daytime. They needed a babysitter for several hours a day.

Mrs. Betty Vance, who lived in the apartment upstairs from theirs, was available and willing. She was a grandmother in her fifties, with a pleasant smile, who said she loved children. So each morning on her way to work, Sue would take Jon up to Mrs. Vance, while Conor slept from the end of his shift on the docks until about noon. Then he would have Jon for the afternoon.

This arrangement worked out okay for a few weeks. Then Conor's hours were cut back again, and he was only working until three a.m. He didn't tell Susanna about the change. Instead, after work he stopped in at a nearby all-night bar, and had a few drinks. Then he got into a poker game with some men he met in the bar, and lost part of his week's paycheck. Drunk and angry, around six a.m., when Sue had already taken Jon upstairs and left for work, Conor came home and fell into bed. It was nearly one p.m. when he awoke, and stumbled upstairs to get Jon, telling Mrs. Vance that he'd worked an extra couple of hours. She thought nothing of it and said she was happy he was getting more work. And so the pattern continued. After work each night he went to the bar, met his friends, drank and played poker—which he usually lost, though never more than a few dollars—and was picking Jon up later and later.

One morning when Susanna dropped Jon off, Mrs. Vance mentioned that it was nice for them that Conor was working longer hours, but if she was going to keep Jon for the whole day, she would need a little more money than Sue was paying her.

"What?" Sue said. "Nothing's changed with his hours. What do you mean—you have Jon all day?"

"Conor's been getting home after seven a.m. for the past few weeks, dear," Mrs. Vance said, puzzled. "At first he was only an hour or so late getting Jon, but that must not have been enough sleep. This week he's been getting him between 3 and 3.30."

Sue was shocked, and apologized to the kind woman. She dug into her purse where she kept her tiny cash reserve and offered her two extra dollars for the past week.

"Oh, no, dear. That's not necessary. But an extra dollar or two would be welcome from now on as long as Conor has the hours."

Sue headed for work, puzzled and angry. Conor had said absolutely nothing about longer hours or more money. In fact, it seemed that there was even less cash in their budget envelopes than usual.

She left work early that day—claiming a migraine—and came home to confront Conor before he left for work. The argument that resulted continued for two days. It ended abruptly when Conor struck her for the first time.

He apologized immediately, seemingly as stunned as she was by his actions. Begging her forgiveness, he claimed he'd only reacted violently because she'd been so angry, and sounded as if she might leave him. Sue had no experience with domestic violence, and she believed him, accepting the blame for the incident upon herself. They made up cautiously, and things settled down.

For a while it was better. Conor told Sue the truth about his work hours, and he cut his bar visits to only an hour or so after work. He abandoned the card games—gambling was really not his problem, it was just an excuse to drink. He seemed to be genuinely sorry for hitting her, however, and wanted to make it up to her.

Two months later, one of the galleries that had previously taken Conor's pictures called him, and asked if he had anything he could bring in. He rushed to finish some canvases that he'd let slide. The gallery was pleased with them and ordered several more. Conor was offered a contract—not nearly as good as the earlier one, but at least he had a more or less steady income.

Things improved somewhat between Sue and Conor after that, but they never got back to the point they had been the year Jon was born. Overall, it was a long slide downhill, as Conor's drinking became more and more of a problem and both his painting, and their marriage suffered as a result.

~finis~

 **xxxxxx**

 **This one has actually been written for a while and just needed a final edit. Hope you enjoyed it.**

 **I have a sequel to this that I've been working on, but it's not finished yet. It's about Jack's childhood and teen years. Working title is 'Jon' but I hope to come up with something better!**


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